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Re: Islam Q&A Thread

Paece!

re: aurat
i thought that the aurat for women extended only up to the ankles in the feet?
and does aurat also include that the clothes be not tight-fitting to hide the body's outline or just that the necessary body parts are covered?

i would like to share this. somewhat humorous for non-muslims but i think this is a great invention to allow muslim females to enjoy active outdoor activities....
and it also for those not wanting to show skin for non-muslims albeit for more "cosmetic" reasons

Re: Islam Q&A Thread

About aurat, yes, for woman it is the whole body except the palms and the face. It's a basic rules of women's aurat in Quran. And by women wearing a thight outfit that the body outline is shown, it can be considered an aurat revealing.

So these are the two "minimum" prerequisites to be called a Christian whic differentiates them from Jews and Moslems.

Quote:

The name "Christian" (GreekΧριστιανόςStrong's G5546), meaning "belonging to Christ" or "partisan of Christ",[8]

Originally Posted by conan

well even though I live in the uk and in my original country in the middle east I had two chritian neighbours, I dont claim to know much about christianity, first you mentioned the messiah in your post in the islam q and a thread so you answer here and there if you like, also, whats so different about catholic, protistant and orthodox christianity, and finally, could you explain the issue of the old testament and the new testament becuase I dont get it.
thanks.

Regarding the term Messiah....

Quote:

...the focus of Christian theology is a belief in Jesus as the Messiah or Christ. The title "Messiah" comes from the Hebrew word מָשִׁיחַ (māšiáħ) meaning "the anointed one" or "King." The Greek translation Χριστός (Christos) is the source of the English word Christ.

This is the main difference with the Jews as they are still waiting for "their" Messiah to come....

Regarding the different sects/denominations of Christianity....

This was brought about by historical internal and external factors. At the start, Christianity was persecuted and when it ended and they were given power and a favourable status, the unity that held them united in the persecution was shattered and like a corked bottle, almost exploded into different sects/denomination/beliefs with different interpretations of their doctrine. The emerging authority structure tried to resolve these by convening different "church councils" to resolve these disputes. As humans are not perfect, almost every council resulted in some form of a breakup from the dominant stream of Christianity resulting in what you see today.

The differences range from the fundamental/canonical (scripture-related, the nature of Christ) to the sacramental (rites of worship, the role of different Traditions) and even political (the legitimate authority to arbitrate matters of faith and morals).

Regarding the Old Testament and New Testament...
The Old Testament consists of books that the Jews hold to be divinely inspired (the Torah/Pentateuch, historical writings, Psalms, Prophetic texts, etc). The New Testament consist of books written after the OT that deal with the teachings and life of Christ. There are apochryphal/deuterocannonical books which are in dispute as whether they are divinely inspired or just worthy as supplemental reading.

Originally Posted by amar_kun

peace be upon you, leen . i hope with this thread we can clears any ambiguity about christianity..

this is my question.. i've heard in a few talks in youtube that christian have many version of holy bible.. so how many version of holy bible do you have? and what is the difference between each version?

ok, that is my question for now.. bye!

I'll try to answer this one. Ordinary/lay Christians do not usually use the BIble as written in their original language in worship and personal prayer (although specialized theological seminaries (religious schools of higher learning) study them in the original Hebrew and Greek. Hence the different versions correspond to the different translations made throughout history as a result of external factors and what is the dominant language at that time.
As the Bible is held as the Word of God, the translators have quite a power on how the Word of God is made understandable in the language to be translated.

Hence, the different denominations advocate different translations that affirm/do not contradict their teachings.
So there are almost no finite "versions" of the Bible as anyone with the resources and translation to print one can claim it as his own "version" of it.

Quote:

Translation has given rise to a number of issues, as the original languages are often quite different in grammar as well as word meaning. While the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy states that inerrancy applies only to the original languages, some believers trust their own translation to be the accurate one. For readability, clarity, or other reasons, translators may choose different wording or sentence structure, and some translations may choose to paraphrase passages. Because some of the words in the original language have ambiguous or difficult to translate meanings, debates over the correct interpretation occur.

Re: Christianity Q&A Thread

We(Christians) have many versions of bible in English alone. There is no specific number of translation available.

I'll give you an example.
Arguably, the most accurate version is King James Version(KJV). This is said so because KJV retains the most of the original hebrew/old English translation. Words like thy, thou, brethen are used widely in KJV. However, this poses several problems to those who find it too boring and hard to understand because of all the thou and thy. Notice this also, the language used in KJV is more poetic than the rest of the versions as well, again making it the not-so-appealing type of version to normal people who prefers readability to accuracy.

Hence, KJV comes up with New King James Version (NKJV). It still retains the old English but some of the sentences are restructured (but same meaning) to improve readability.

So you see, even for KJV alone, there are already several versions of it.

Another TRUSTED version is of course New International Version (NIV). This is the most widely used version in the world. In fact, I plan to get a study bible from NIV. NIV replaces all the thou, thy, brethen to brothers, you, we...etc. So, it automatically enhances readability without altering the meaning of the bible itself. It is one of the most readable bible version of all time with simple, concise usage of English.

The current bible that I am using is New Living Translation (NLT). Take note of this also, NLT is not a VERSION, rather it is a TRANSLATION. It is a translation of the original version but it does not have variations of its own like (KJV NKJV). It is also very readable. Some prefer this translation because the English used is very straightfoward and easy to understand.

There are also other versions of English bible because different countries use different English. For instance, Americans will use American English Bible like American Standard Version (ASV) while the UK people might prefer the bible to be written in British English, thus the English Contemporary Version (ECV). Besides, we also have different types of bible to suit different age groups. Students might go for "Study Bible For Teens" while the children might want to read "Children Bible". Every versions contain the same essence, the only difference is the way it presents itself to suit different people with different English command and needs. A scholar will usually goes for KJV but layman like you and I who just want to catch the meaning and not the aesthetic value of it, might mostly go for NKJV, NIV or NLT according to our own preferences.

That's about the different versions of bible.

Originally Posted by conan

well even though I live in the uk and in my original country in the middle east I had two chritian neighbours, I dont claim to know much about christianity, first you mentioned the messiah in your post in the islam q and a thread so you answer here and there if you like, also, whats so different about catholic, protistant and orthodox christianity, and finally, could you explain the issue of the old testament and the new testament becuase I dont get it.
thanks.

Hey, Techno was right about the different denominations of Christian. Just to add a little not of myself here.

At first, there was only one type of Christianity. As time evolved, especially during the Reformation era, the Catholics were corrupted with the selling of Certificate of Indulgence and the priests of the era were too concerned about the spiritual life that they ignored almost totally the secular life. Martin Luther King was the first one to protest against the selling of Certificate of Indulgence and also to criticize the Catholic churches for some of their wrongdoings. After the first printing machine in Europe was invented by Johann Gutenberg, printing of bibles became an easy task. Soon, everyone was able to afford cheap bibles and realized how the Catholics had diverted from the original teaching of the Christ. To fight that, protestant movement was inspired by Martin Luther King. Hence, we now have Protestant and Catholics.

John Calvin and Martin Luther King were some of the most notable early Protestant founders. Of course, not all the Catholics were corrupted, which was why the Reformed Catholics came into the drama as well. These people (couldn't remember their name... ) also lived a very modest life without corruption and they claimed themselves to be reformed Catholics. Over the years, there were a lot of holy wars in Europe between Protestant and Catholics that divided Europe into Pro-Catholics and Pro-Protestant.

You will notice that the northen countries are more towards Protestantism while the southern countries advocate Catholicism. Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal.....so on and so forth are also considered as a Protestant movement. Basically, all the non-Catholics are Protestant. Of course, in our modern days, some prefer to call themselves as non-denominational, meaning that they are neither Catholics nor Protestant.

Re: Christianity Q&A Thread

There are a number of criteria which are usually used when assessing a translation:

Does the traanslator have a good knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Greek?

How literal is it? A less literal translation uses more natural language.

What is it going to be used for? A more literal Bible which is suitable for extremely detailed study of a single chapter may not be very easy to read in large quantities.

Who is the audience? Children? Working class people? Theologians? The level of language used by the translators will have some differences.

What is the theological background of the translators? A Bible translated by a single Christian sect is likely to be different from a Bible translated by a cross-denominational group such as, for example, the United Bible Societies.

Is the translation done by a single person, a different person per book, or a committee of people? A single person is most likely to have bias. Examples of Bibles done by individuals are The Living Bible and Lamsa Bible. The latter is a good illustration of the problem of translations done by individuals; the author of this translation has taken particular translation decisions which most scholars simply do not accept as being correct.

What were the source documents used to do the translation? A translation like The Living Bible which does not use the original languages is likely to suffer a lot more from the Chinese whispers effect.

How old is the translation? Perhaps word usage has changed today, or new document fragments have been discovered.

Does the publisher/translator provide a free download or do they even charge for an e-text version?

I'll try to be more objective here.
--If you want readability, yes try the NLT and other paraphrased/dynamic versions. These are also more suitable for private reading as the text does not "weigh" you down.
--The KJV has a high degree of accuracy with what original text was available at that time aside from its literary, sentimental, historical and religious value.
--The NIV is a balance between the paraphrased and the scholastic/formal character of the KJV.

The more recent versions benefit from the recent discoveries of alternative original sources and thus are more appropriate for a more thorough scholarly work.
--Examples are the New Jerusalem Bible and the New/Revised Standard Version.
--For a cross-denominational version (several Christian denominations working together for a common bible that is accepted by many denominations), the RSV/NRSV is also appropriate.
--For liturgical/worship use, there's the New American Bible for Catholics and the KJV for some of the traditional/evangelical American Christian denominations and the RSV/NRSV for others.

The other versions are of sentimental, historical and old liturgical/worship (prior to modern reforms of several denominations) value.

As you can see, bible translations/versions are as numerous as the denominations that promote a particular one to be used.

-----------------------------------------------

re: denominations
it is interestng to note that a lot of the newer denominations "claim" primacy from the earliest form of Christianity and are erroneously labelled in the general term as "Protestants"(see Restorationism).

Re: Christianity Q&A Thread

There really are too many versions of bible nowadays. However, the best thing to do (that's what I think) is to get a version that you are most comfortable with, and stick with it. If you switch from one version to another, sometimes it can be quite confusing.

Just something on a site note, when a group of my friends sit down for a bible study night and everyone reads a line from his or her bible, it was like WoW. Everyone with different sentence for different verses. XD It's quite interesting too. But at the end of the day, we all manage to grasp the meaning of that chapter and we still managed to do our bible study together. That only goes to show how different versions is not a big problem actually.

Of course, I have to agree to some degree of certainty about the chinese whispers. HEHEHE. I played that game several times and each time ended up with something completely different from the original message. XD

Re: Christianity Q&A Thread

Thank you Technomagus and Leen for you answer. It must took you a while to write all of those . but it is worthwhile because at the end of the day other people will understand your religion better. thank you.

Re: Islam Q&A Thread

Thanks Technomagus for sharing the link

I hope with this invention, there will be no more perception of saying religion doesnt allow you to play sport. Actually, the outfit already being used by some athletes during the last Asian Game. Guess what, one of them even won the sprint for women!

Re: Christianity Q&A Thread

@amar
having studied the pre-requisite of 12 units of theology and 12 units of philosophy with the jesuits as NON-MAJOR subjects in a science and engineering course and being under 3 catholic schools for primary, secondary and tertiary education pretty makes it obvious....

Re: Christianity Q&A Thread

As for me, I was under three methodist schools for kindergarten, primary and secondary schools. It's pretty obvious too where I stand. XD Plus, two semester of ethics, theology and philosophy in an Economics majoring degree program........ haha